I was teaching about externalities, discussing externalities arising out of traffic violations. During discussion, we discussed how it is possible to reward the ‘good’ driving along with fines for violations. I did not want to stop at discussing using material incentives to address the external effects of human behaviour. I wanted to show that societies often develop behavioural norms which essentially address externalities – effects of one’s behaviour on others. These behavioural norms are or were seen as a code to be followed for its own sake and not for any possible benefit. (For example, नेकी कर और कुवे मे डाल) The subtler point I wanted to highlight was use of material rewards can weaken the power of one’s own moral code on one’s own behaviour.
I asked
students following. Suppose you are driving a vehicle at 2 AM. You are at a
point from where your destination is on 100 meters if you drive on the wrong
side of the road. But if you go as per the driving rules, then you must drive
for about one km.
The set of
students who actively participate in class discussions was unanimous in their
answer – they will go wrong side. They have the justification – it is not going
to harm anyone since there aren’t many vehicles there at that point of time,
hence it is not really a bad behaviour.
I was not
surprised. Any teacher who has graded answer-books from online examinations
knows dark truths about integrity of students. One thing online examination has
clearly showed to me is smart guys, guys for whom incentives work stronger than
any sense of fairness, will not be fair if there are no incentives. A student of
greater ability who does not cheat fairs worse than a smart student who indulge
in trading of answers and hence ends up providing a best answer of not his or
her own making.
Smart guys
are everywhere. There is a shopkeeper in the corner who starts encroaching the pavement
and eventually makes it part of the shop. There is a person who finds a slack
in the informal queue, for an escalator or for an auto, and fills that up, and
then plays dumb to taunts of fellow individuals. There is that senior citizen
who can enter a crowded train and then keeps looking at young passengers with
pleading face to get a seat. Driving in cities is perhaps all about being smart
– cutting, wrong-side, as many pillion riders as one can, underage drivers,
whatever that maximizes one’s benefit out of driving.
We celebrate
smartness. My students aren’t different. The philosophy of smartness is – since
I am not harming you, I can do whatever I want, even when it is not as per how
things should be. There is no ‘should’ for smart guys. If it can be and no one’s
harmed, it will be – that’s ethics of smartness.
But there’s
harm. A capable students get piled under fakery of smart guys helping each
other and that can diminish her prospects. Lot of parents taking wrong side to
drop their wards to school create a mess and teach their kids that it is fine
to bend things when convenient. All shopkeepers now see pavement as an
extension of their shop, and not as a boundary that should be respected.
In world of
smarts, there are not many actions for their own sake. If you are good at
something, you must make money out of it, that is being smart. In smart world,
one keeps wishing about days and events which do not matter, as a premium of
being part of social networks. In smart world, to have a good time is either to
buy and to click, or to plan collaborative actions in the future. In smart world,
students become volunteers as social causes to further their university
applications. To be smart is to live life as a scheme that pushes one’s case
further. There is no meaning otherwise, inside, or outside.
Two years
back, I was pleasantly surprised when I came to know that some of students had
gone to popular protests. Independent of whether cause of protest is justified
or not, their act of being part of something outside their scheme of life,
their act of participating beyond boil of emotions on social media, was a surprise.
It was different that the annoying smartness that students, especially at
premium places, have now a days – where each class is just a brick in their scheme
towards future scheme.
May be isolation
forced by the epidemic has annihilated any non-smartness that was ever there. There
are no others when one cannot see them for long. There is only I and I must
care for myself. So, my students taking a wrong side for shorter distance made
sense to me. The epidemic of smartness has truly set in. It is never going to
go away now.